Parking in a disabled person's car park 🚗😠

Fiona from Henderson

Let me get this off my chest first. I am not a disabled person that requires assistance in any form or a specific car park.
However, and this is where my blood absolutely boils.
There is next to no help for the disabled when a non-disabled person parks in their designated carpark!!!

I found this out when I saw a blatant abuse of this rule by a family of strappingly healthy people in their big Ford Territory on Saturday at Olympic Park in New Lynn.

I knew that there is an app called Access Aware, but it’s only live in Christchurch, Wellington, Hutt City and Tauranga! Someone really needs to design an app for the whole of New Zealand reporting illegal parking in disabled car parks.
So, I called CCS Disability Action to report it and they told me that they can't do anything and that I have to report it to whoever owns the park or area of concern.

So I called the Auckland City Council ... what a waste of time!

This time I was told that when I saw this vehicle parking illegally, I should have called the council straight away and they would send someone out within an hour. An hour and even that's not guaranteed!!

For goodness sake, no wonder the able bodied people don't give a rat's arse about parking where they damn well like. There are no repercussions if they do this.

It didn't matter that I took photos of this vehicle illegally parked in a disabled car park, took down all details including that there was no disabled permit whatsoever anywhere in the vehicle (just in case their disability is invisible), the time, date and place - they didn't care one iota!

There were so many available non-disabled car parks, so they can't use that excuse.
The person you see in the background carrying a child was one of the people in this vehicle.

So, to all of you people who park in designated disabled car parks - SHAME ON YOU!!!

The disabled community have very few spots to park and they don't need you to take one of the very few available.